Palm Beach Junior College Labor Controversy Settled

August 31, 1985|By Stephen J. Cohen, Staff Writer

A 5-year-old labor controversy at Palm Beach Junior College was settled Friday when the Florida Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the so-called ``management rights`` clause cannot be forced into a union contract if the union objects.

The ruling ends a turbulent chapter in union-management relations at the two- year junior college, headquartered just west of Lake Worth.

In 1980, PBJC officials asked union leaders to allow a clause in the 1980-81 contract allowing management to take unilateral action during the school year on anything not specifically delineated in the union contract.

PBJC negotiator Jesse Hogg explained management needed this in case something urgent came up requiring immediate action. Without that clause, he reasoned, college officials might find their hands tied by the union demanding to negotiate the matter.

But union negotiators, already distrustful of management, balked. Union President Joan Young said the proposal might allow management to force unpopular decisions on the union, without the union having a say.

Both sides had already negotiated a 9.5-percent faculty pay raise for 1980-81 when Young declared the talks to be at impasse in June 1980.

In October that year the Public Employees Relations Commission sent a special master to mediate the dispute. The special master upheld the union`s position.

The PBJC Board of Trustees in November 1980 unanimously mandated that the management rights clause be included in the contract in order for it to be ratified.

In 1981, after the 9.5 percent increase had been placed in escrow until the dispute was resolved, PERC ruled in favor of the union, which had filed an unfair labor practice charge. PERC ordered the trustees to rescind their November action.

Instead, the college appealed to the 1st District Court of Appeals. In late 1983, that court upheld PERC`s decision and the trustees appealed to Florida`s highest court.

In a 12-page opinion, Justice Raymond Ehrlich summed up the court`s unanimous ruling, saying the college cannot force the union to include the waiver clause in its contract over the union`s objections.

Hogg said until he sees the full opinion he cannot be sure how the decision will affect similar labor disputes in the state, now or later.

``Sometimes you win the battle and lose the war,`` he said. The ruling could result in college officials having to write out lengthy lists of situations that might arise during the year requiring quick unilateral action. That list would then have to be negotiated with the union point by point.

``It could take a long time to do that and you might end up with a contract that`s as big as the New York telephone directory,`` he said.